When front covers go wrong

Heart-warming and intriguing news coming out of Egypt, but I sympathise with a fellow editor who must be thinking, why now? I’m sure it seemed a good idea at the time, but when around 414,850 members of the CSMA Club received their magazine over the past few days, editor Jeremy Whittle can only have wished it didn’t have “the wonders of the world’s oldest destinations” on the cover – Egypt.

As tourists try to flee the country, one of many interesting things is the way Egypt’s heritage seems to be faring. There is damage reported in the Cairo museum holding Tutankhamun’s treasures, but it, the New Library of Alexandria, Luxor Museum and other locations seem to have been protected by a spontaneous alliance of citizens, police and military. There are many instances of this kind where in the most fraught situations, people have shown how much they really value their heritage – so at odds with a cultural attitude in Britain that too often puts heritage in a side-room with cheap souvenirs, unskilled labour, light entertainment and soft politics.

I don’t have any special inside information on events in Egypt, but there are several things on the web worth following, including Alan Boyle’s Cosmic Log, Margaret Maitland’s Eloquent Peasant and Egyptology News.

I happen to be writing about unusual archaeological places to visit for a travel magazine this week. No pyramids there anyway, at least not in Egypt.

British Archaeology has just gone to press, so there are a few days for something to go disastrously wrong with our cover. But fingers crossed we shouldn’t be affected by protests and revolutions – and the cover’s one of our best. Not to mention the contents…